The present invention relates to user interactive computer supported display technology and particularly to user interactive display interfaces which are user friendly; more particularly, the invention is directed to tools which may be used in the design and development of such interfaces.
The 1990""s decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the internet over the past few years. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all business and technology in the industrialized world requires human-computer interfaces.
It has been recognized for over a decade that the interfaces to all aspects of computer driven and directed technology are the key to the future of the technology. Consequently, extensive resources have applied to the constant improvement of the human-computer interfaces, i.e. making such interfaces more user-friendly, more intuitive and easier to learn and remember. This has resulted in greatly increasing the numbers of developers and programmers working on improving interactive display interfaces. Also, with the ever increasing interest in computer games and, more recently, the Internet explosion, greater numbers of developers are directing their resources toward the development of interactive display interfaces in those two consumer areas.
In the understanding of the needs that gave rise to the present invention it is important to note that the developers of interfaces to a variety of programs rarely use the programs themselves to support the interactive display tools which they are using to develop or modify such programs. Rather, the developers use emulations of the program interfaces provided by graphics functions of the operating system of the computer display being used for the development together with the development application. Since the interfaces being worked on by the developers have substantially no connection to the programs for which interfaces are being developed, the developer cannot access the program through his display interface and, thus, has no direct way of getting additional information about the program should he need it. For example, the developer is working on a display interface to a mainframe computer which is an emulation of an IBM 3270 I/O terminal or writing a particular computer input program and finds that he needs help to understand a term or other aspect of the program on which he is working, he cannot access the program itself through his development display interface. He has to leave his development function and actively bring up the program for which the interface is being developed so that he may launch a help system within the program. This may be disruptive and awkward but doable where the developer has substantial computer experience. However, in the case of interface developers, they are often involved because of their design rather than computer skills and finding suitable help by launching the actual program could cause them considerable delay.
The present invention provides alternate access to such program help and other information not directly accessible through the interface by providing access via a stored database model of the actual program interface which is being developed or emulated. Accordingly, the present invention provides in a display interface, provided by the combination of an operating system and at least one application program, the combination of means for dynamically storing a database model of the data content of a display interface to said application program (i.e. as the display screen changes through a sequence of screen, the database is continually updated to reflect such changes), means in said database model for sensing the displayed data content in said interface, and means responsive to said sensing means for providing additional displayed information to said interface. In a preferred embodiment, this sensed displayed data content is text, and preferably is responsive to a user input indicating a need for help relative to displayed text. The user input usually designates the displayed text for which help is needed, e.g. by using the cursor or keystroke to highlight the text indicative of the help needed. In response to such an indication of help needed, e.g. the user highlighting the stored database model has means for interpreting the text highlighted by the cursor and accessing appropriate help in the help system.
According to other aspects of the present invention, the development program may be a text editor for writing programming commands or it may be a program for the emulation of an interface to a mainframe computer. Also, the displayed interface may be a page obtained off the World Wide Web or Internet through a browser program and the database model may function to store a model of such page and interpret data on said page to launch the browser program to activate selected predetermined links to network databases.
In its broadest aspects, the present invention is directed to an interactive display interface having a subsystem for accessing information interactively, inaccessible through said display interface, comprising means for storing a database model of the dynamic data content of said display interface, means in said database model for sensing predetermined displayed data content in said interface and means responsive to said sensing means for providing said information to said interface.